Yesterday's Shadow

by Jon Cleary

  “At the beginning,” said Malone, knowing he was making a concession.

  “Well, Boris and I have been married fourteen years. He's from Leningrad—or what do they call it now?”

  “St. Petersburg,” said Gail.

  Delia didn't look at her; her gaze was solely on Malone. “Yes, there. He was a merchant seaman—he came to Australia twice on a ship. I met him, I liked him, he liked me—” She stopped for just a moment, her gaze still focused on Malone; then she went on, “The third trip he jumped ship and stayed on.”

  “He was an illegal immigrant?” asked Malone.

  “I guess so. They never came looking for him—he got papers, I dunno how. We were happy—” She stopped again. She's making points, Malone thought; but ignored them, just looked back at her. She went on again, “I had the children and then things started to go wrong—”

  “I'll say they did,” said Rosie Quantock. “Ten bloody years—”

  “Mrs. Quantock,” said Pam Morrow warningly.

  “Sorry.”

  Delia continued: “He wouldn't let Melissa near the house—she was my daughter from my first husband.” Again the look; again he made no comment. “Then the—the belting started. I ran away, twice, with the children. But he came after me each time—”

  “Why did you go back to him?” asked Gail.

  Delia shrugged. “Ask any battered wife why—” For a moment she looked at Gail; then she turned her gaze back to Malone. For the first time there was a plea in her voice: “That's what I've been, Scobie. A battered wife.”

  He wanted to reach across and press her hand, but refrained. “Go on. Tell us about last night. Did you go in to the hotel with the intention of killing him?”

  “That's a leading question,” snapped Pam Morrow. Try another one, Inspector—”

  “No, it's all right,” said Delia. “Yes. I took the children to my mother's, told her I was going in to tell Boris I was leaving him for good. I wanted him dead, but I don't think I intended killing him.”

  “Where did you get the knife?” Malone was wishing he were out of here.

  “I dunno. It was there in the room—I just picked it up—”

  Malone said nothing further; it was Gail who asked, “Why? Why did you pick it up?”

  “Careful, Delia,” warned Pam Morrow. “You have to be exact about this. It was after Boris hit you, wasn't it?”

  “You're advising your client,” said Gail.

  Lay off, Gail! Malone almost shouted.

  “That's why I'm here,” said Pam Morrow. “To make sure she gives you the exact facts, the exact truth.”

  Delia took her time, still looking at Malone as if there were just the two of them in the room. Then she said, “It was after he hit me—here and here—” She pointed to the bruises on her face; still calm, as if they were no more than skin blemishes. “He gave me the black eye before he left home.”

  “Bastard!” said Rosie Quantock.

  “There was a struggle?” Malone was leaving the questioning to Gail.

  But Delia was still speaking directly to him: “Oh yes, we fought. We knocked things over—I picked them up and put them back after I'd stabbed him—” She smiled at him, like the old Delia of long ago; he was beginning to wonder if the composure was a pose. “Neat as usual, remember? But I was just trying to get myself together—I mean, I knew I'd killed him, he wasn't moving—”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Just a minute—” Malone said. “What time was this, Delia?”

  “Some time after midnight—he'd broken my watch when we fought last night.” She looked at it now on her wrist. “You gave it to me, remember?”

  He didn't remember and he wondered why she mentioned it.

  “That was eight-twenty last night. It's stopped.”

  Malone nodded to Gail, who went on, “So you tidied up the store room—what did you do with the knife?”

  “I dunno. I forget.”

  “How did you leave the hotel?”

  “I went out a side door into that alley, that lane, that's there—I didn't want to meet any of Boris' mates. I waited for a taxi outside the hotel.”

  Romy had said that Billie Pavane had died eight to ten hours before she was examined: that put that murder around 1 a.m.

  Malone said, “While you were waiting for the taxi, did you see anyone come out of the hotel?”

  If Delia was remembering anything it wasn't what she saw outside the hotel last night; she had a faraway look, remembering the distant past. Remembering the bruising Malone had given her when he had jilted her? Then her gaze focused and she looked at Gail and said, “What?”

  “Inspector Malone asked you a question,” said Gail.

  “Oh.” Then she looked at him again, this time almost impersonally. He repeated his question and she said, “Yes, a man.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  She shook her head. “Only vaguely. A taxi pulled up and he tried to grab it. But I got the door open first—” Now she gave him a very personal look, leaning forward. “I wasn't thinking too clearly, Scobie—you can understand that, can't you? You must know how in shock I was?”

  He didn't ask how he was expected to know: he knew.

  He said nothing, and she went on, “Why do you want to know about the man?”

  “The other murder?” said Rosie Quantock, who had been silent too long.

  “Would you recognize him again if you saw him?” Malone said.

  “Would it help you if I did?”

  “Hold on a minute,” said Pam Morrow. “You're not using Delia as a witness to that case while we're still talking about her own case.”

  “No, I'd like to help,” said Delia, looking directly at Malone as if they were alone in the room.

  She's too eager, he thought. But he said, “Go on.”

  “He was, I dunno, medium-sized. Not as tall as you, not as beefy—”

  “Thank you.” He didn't grin, but the four women did.

  “Well, you're not beefy, I suppose. You haven't changed much, really. Anyhow, he was slimmer than you. Or I think he was—he was wearing an overcoat, a dark one. And a hat.”

  “What sort of hat?”

  “I dunno. Just a hat. Not one of those broad-brimmed ones, the Akubras. I wasn't looking at him to remember him—” For the first time she sounded testy; he remembered she could get short- tempered about small things. But never the larger things, like being jilted . . . “I'll remember him if I see him again.”

  “It could've been one of the hotel workers,” said Gail. “Going off duty. Do you know any of them?”

  Delia shook her head. “No. I've never been near the hotel till last night. Boris never wanted me anywhere near where he worked.”

  “Didn't want his mates to see he was a wife-basher,” said Rosie Quantock. “A real bastard. Bottom of the heap.”

  “How long had he been working at the hotel?”

  “Two—no, three months. He lost his last job—he worked for a bricklayer. They didn't get on.”

  “He bashed him, too.” Mrs. Quantock couldn't help being helpful.

  “I think this has gone on long enough,” said Pam Morrow and snapped shut her briefcase as if to close all argument. “Are you going to charge my client?”

  “Yes,” said Malone, not looking at Delia. “She'll be held here overnight and arraigned tomorrow morning, probably down at Liverpool Street.”

  “What about bail?”

  “That'll be up to the Crown Prosecutor. We won't oppose it.”

  “Thanks, Scobie.” Delia reached across and pressed his hand. He felt an inward flinch, but didn't draw his hand away.

  “How's she gunna raise bail?” demanded Rosie Quantock. “She hasn't got a cracker, nothing.”

  “Do you own your own house?” asked Gail.

  It was Mrs. Quantock who answered, with a loud dry cackle. “She's renting, for Crissake! She'd have trouble raising a hundred dollars—”

  “Rosie, please�
�”

  “No, love. This is no time for bloody embarrassment. That arsehole's given you nothing—”

  Malone turned to Pam Morrow. “Can the Women's Protection League help?”

  “We'll see. We'll plead self-defence, so maybe the beak will be lenient. If he is, we can cover it.”

  Malone stood up, switched off the recorder. “I'm sorry, Delia.”

  She looked up at him. “For what?”

  He left that unanswered.

  IV

  He went home in gathering darkness that suited his mood. He always looked forward to coming home to the house in Randwick; he valued home, like a comforting mental condition. It wasn't just the love he found there under the Federation gables but the normality; when he stepped in the front door and closed it behind him he was shutting out Crime, with a capital C. Not that Crime in today's world was abnormal. It was just that, most days, he didn't have to bring it home with him.

  “Another bad day?” said Lisa as he kissed her cheek.

  Women, he was convinced, were born with antennae hidden somewhere in their secret skulls. “What about you?”

  She had worked for the past three years as a public relations officer at Town Hall. Her original assignment had been with the Olympics, but that long headache was now past; the Olympics had been a success, two weeks of excitement and euphoria, and now the city was slowly and reluctantly adjusting to the downturn in the boom. Like the post-coital blues, she had described it to him, though she had never put that in one of her press releases.

  She was at the fridge, taking out the beef burgundy she had prepared last night. “Half an hour to dinner. I just have to heat everything. Open the wine.”

  They were alone in the kitchen. This was family night. Claire and her husband Jason, Maureen and Tom would all be here for dinner. Claire had been married a year; Maureen had moved out to live with two girlfriends earlier this year; Tom, who loved a new girl every week but loved his mother's cooking more, was still living at home. Malone knew how fortunate he was to have a family that was not dysfunctional.

  “Nobody's here yet?”

  “No. You want to shower before they arrive? Tom rang to say he's on his way.” Tom was in his last year of Economics at university. “He had a date with his tutor.”

  “A date with his tutor?”

  “She's twenty-eight and a dish, he says. I don't think he's doing market research with her. Or maybe he is. Move over.”

  He shifted along the kitchen bench to make room as she put vegetables into a pot. He picked up one of the two bottles of red wine, then put it down, folded his arms and leaned back against the bench. At ease—like hell: “I met an old girlfriend today.”

  “Which one?” Sounding as if he had told her he had met an old pet dog. Or bitch.

  “Delia Bates.”

  Then she looked at him, her hands about to open a bag of rice. “Ah.”

  “That all you have to say?”

  “Till I hear what else you're going to say.”

  Women: they could weave barbed wire out of words. “We're holding her for homicide. She stabbed her husband this morning.”

  She cut the bag of rice, with a knife. “Will she get off?”

  “I dunno. They're pleading self-defence.”

  “How did she feel? I mean, you arresting her?”

  “I didn't take her in. Phil Truach did that. I interviewed her. She won't talk to anyone but me.”

  “That must have been nice.” She poured the rice into a dry saucepan, white B-B bullets that hit the metal with a clatter. She put down the knife, a long-bladed kitchen knife with blood on it. “Or was it uncomfortable? I would have been if I'd been there.”

  “You weren't there! I'm more uncomfortable right now. Christ, darl, imagine how I felt—”

  “I am.” She put the saucepan down on the bench, gave him her full attention. “She was in love with you, once.”

  “Christ, what a memory!” Foolishly, he was getting angry. “Twenty-five years ago.”

  Delia had been the only girl he had ever talked about. Not at length and reluctantly, as if (he thought now) there had been guilt at leaving Delia. It seemed, now, that Lisa remembered what he had forgotten. Women and elephants . . . but now was not the time to voice that comparison. He was already offside in the argument.

  “That's what I'm thinking about,” said Lisa. “You come home and tell me about a domestic, your girlfriend of twenty-five years ago killing her husband, and you don't mention the other homicide that's been on the news all day. The murder of the wife of the American Ambassador. Or aren't you on that one?”

  Then the cavalry's bugle blew; or the doorbell rang. “I'll get it,” he said and almost galloped down the hallway to open the door to Maureen, Claire and Jason.

  The girls kissed him; Jason shook hands. His son-in-law was three or four inches taller than he, had bulked out since his marriage; Claire was as good a cook as her mother. His mother was in jail, doing life for, with her lesbian lover, having murdered Jason's father. Malone suddenly determined there would be no further talk this evening of domestics. He had warm affection for Jason and suddenly was protective of him.

  Maureen, the TV researcher for Four Corners, was not interested in domestics or small talk. If and when she married, her husband had better not bring his secrets with him. “How about that homicide, the Ambassador's wife? Are you on it, Dad?”

  “Unfortunately. Excuse me, I'll have a quick wash under the armpits. I've just got in.”

  He peeled off into the bathroom, pondered for a moment taking a three-hour soak in the bath. Instead, he stripped off his shirt, had a quick swab under the armpits, washed his face, dried himself, then looked in the mirror. Transfer tomorrow, he told himself. Fingerprints, Traffic. Anywhere to get out of Homicide.

  He put on a clean shirt and a jumper. When he went out to join the family, Tom was just coming in. He wore jeans, a black leather jacket and carried his motorcyclist's helmet under his arm like a big black skull. He, too, was taller than Malone. Little Me, thought Malone, and felt self-sympathy itching like a rash.

  He helped Maureen get the drinks. She was an attractive girl, dark-haired and good-figured and, Malone guessed, she wore her boyfriends out with her restless energy. He sometimes wondered where she got it from. “Who dunnit? The Ambassador?”

  “Don't joke, Mo. None of your ABC anti-US bias.”

  “We're impartial. We're anti-everyone but ourselves.”

  “Relax, Mo,” Claire told her sister. She had her mother's blonde looks and composure; their Zuyder Zee look, as Tom called it, never making more than small waves. “You're not on camera now. Is it going to be tough, Dad?”

  He nodded, sipped his beer. The three men were drinking beer; the two girls were on white wine. Out in the kitchen the cook was probably swigging sweet sherry. All at once Malone began to laugh.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “Nothing, Just a thought.” He took another sip of his beer, then said, “It's going to be tough. You media are going to make a meal of it, Mo.”

  “I know. News are already running around hooting their heads off.” Four Corners, the show she worked on, never ran around hooting; it took its time doing demolition jobs on corruption, maladministration and unsocial justice. He hoped it would never come within coo-ee of the Pavane murder. “You're in for it, Dad. Sorry.”

  “Are the Americans cooperating?” asked Tom. “You got the CIA, the FBI on your back?”

  “No, they know it's our turf.”

  “Dad,” said Maureen, “if we decide to look into Australian-American cooperation or lack thereof—”

  “Raise that question again and I'll find something to pin on you, okay?”

  “Lay off, Mo,” said Claire. “You're so bloody morally correct since you joined the ABC—”

  “Let's all lay off,” said Malone. “How are you making out with your tutor, Tom?”

  “Who told you about her? Mum, I'll bet—”

 
“You're dating your tutor?” both his sisters asked. “You're going for an older woman? What's she teaching you?”

  “How to be economical in bed?” suggested Jason.

  This is what I like to hear, thought Malone, family chi-acking. No violence, no bashing . . . Then Lisa came to the doorway. “Dinner is ready if you layabouts are?”

  The girls were instantly on their feet, rushing to help her. The three of them went out to the kitchen, Tom went in to have a quick shower (where's he been? thought Malone. In the tutor's bed?) and Jason picked up the glasses and put them on a tray.

  “How's work?” Malone asked.

  “Quiet, there's not much around.” Jason was an engineer with a large construction company. Since the Olympics there had been a general turn-down, a bubble deflated if not entirely pricked. “I take it yours is not going to be? Quiet, I mean.”

  “Quiet? Oh, we'll keep it that way as long as we can, our end. But the bloody media . . .” He stood up, suddenly feeling weary again, put his empty glass on the tray. “How's your mum?”

  “I dunno. Philosophical, I guess you'd call it. She never mentions Dad, though. Nor Angela Bodalle, for that matter.” Olive Rockne's lesbian lover and fellow murderer was doing her time in another jail. “Mum hopes to be out in eighteen months. She's been a model prisoner, they say.” He paused in the doorway. “Do you ever think about her?”

  “Often—when I see you. I never got any pleasure from putting her away, Jay.”

  “I know that, Scobie. I'm just happy to have you as a father-in-law.” Then he turned quickly and went out to the kitchen, the glasses rattling on the tray.

  Malone gathered his feelings, which were suddenly like warm coals. Affection from the young is not a cheap gift.

  Dinner was not as awkward as he had expected. The Pavane murder was discussed and everyone was sympathetic towards him for the headaches it promised. Lisa smiled at him from her end of the table, but (why was he so suspicious?) it could have been a public relations smile. The four young ones dominated the conversation, banter flying across the table like party crackers. It was only when relaxation had set in over coffee that Maureen said, “What about the other murder at the hotel, Dad?”

  “What about it?”

  “Are you on it?”