by Jon Cleary
He looked along the table at Lisa and she gave him the same smile: it was a public relations smile, as empty as a clown's laugh. “Yes, I'm on it. For the time being.”
“It's just an ordinary domestic,” said Lisa, reaching for an after-dinner mint, biting into it as if it were part of him.
“Then why are you on it?” Claire looked at her father. “With this other big one?”
He looked along the table again at (Mona) Lisa: the smile was smaller this time. He didn't know what made him say it: “I knew the wife, the one who did the killing. She was an old girlfriend.”
At which they all looked at Lisa, not him. Maureen said Wowie!, Tom smiled broadly, Jason looked as if he would rather be out on a construction site and Claire pursed her lips. Lisa finished the mint, repeated the Mona Lisa smile and said, “Small world, ain't it?”
Claire looked at each of her parents in turn. “Which of you wants me to represent you? I think we're heading for another domestic.”
He cranked up a smile, gave it to Lisa along the table. “She's been married twice since I knew her.”
“She do them both in?” said Tom.
Maureen hit him with her fist. “Pull your head in. This is serious. Why are you on the case, Dad? Just because she's an old girlfriend?”
“Golly,” said Lisa, “I forgot to ask him that.”
“No, I'm not.” Then he began to wonder if he was. “She won't talk to anyone else but me. Nobody else in Homicide.”
“You can't blame her for that, Mum,” said Claire.
“Who's blaming her? Or anyone?” She took another mint, bit into it.
“Has she changed?” asked Maureen the researcher. Get all the facts, we'll sort 'em out later . . . “Would you have recognized her?”
“In the street? No.”
“Why did she kill her husband?” asked Jason and it was obvious it was a difficult question.
“He never reads reports of murder cases,” said Claire, pressing his hand.
“For obvious reasons,” said Jason and for a moment the ceiling fell in.
“Sorry,” said Claire, squeezing his hand hard; then she looked around the table. “What else can we talk about? Who's Randwick playing on Saturday?”
“Eastwood.” Tom played fullback for the local rugby club. “You coming?”
“We'll be there,” said Jason who, like a good engineer, was sensitive to atmospheric pressure. “Let's do the washing-up.”
He stood up, gathered some of the coffee cups and went out to the kitchen. The girls followed him, taking plates. Tom sat a moment, then he, too, rose and went out to the kitchen. Malone and Lisa looked at each other along the length of the table.
“She hasn't raised a spark in me,” he said. “It was all over twenty-five years ago.”
“I know that.” The smile this time was her own; and his. “But if I told you I'd met an old boyfriend, what would you do?”
“Pinch him. For loitering with intent.” He got up, went along the table and kissed her. “I love you.”
“Nice,” said Claire from the doorway. “Now may I finish clearing the table?”
V
Billie Pavane's murderer sat in his $400-a-night hotel room and looked out at the city that he had once hoped to conquer. Conquest of a city had been everyone's (well, everyone he knew) ambition back in the eighties and it still lingered, like a pungent dope smell, even now in this first year of the new century. It was not only Sydney that had the infection: it was there in London, New York, Paris; it was there in Toronto where he now worked. He had read that the richest man in the world was now worth more than all but the six biggest economies and everyone (well, everyone he knew) thought Bill Gates was God, only richer. The old ambition was still there in Billie's killer, like a dormant cancer: greed had once been good and, he heard it all the time, it was coming back into fashion. But not for him. He had a wife and three children (him: who had never wanted to be even a godfather) and they hamstrung him, if unwittingly, with their principles and decency. At least Billie (he had never called her that back in the old days) had had none of those handicaps, principles and decency, back when things had been going so right. Moralists of the world don't realize the handicaps that pragmatists have to face.
He had left Sydney fourteen years ago with almost $500,000 as his share of the—well, call it scam, if you want to be moralistic. He had not been burdened with conscience; in the run-up to the 1987 crash no one could spell the word. He had said no when Billie (he would have to start thinking of her under that name) had told him she wanted to have his child; the last mantle he would have placed on her was that of motherhood. Parenthood, for Christ's sake? He didn't want to be a father, even if he didn't have to live with her and the kids. He had paid for the abortion and been surprised when the doctor insisted on actual cash rather than Diners Club Card; he had lived to the extreme in those days on his credit card, flashing it like a fairy wand. Billie (would he ever get used to that name?) had been violently bitter when the abortion had gone wrong, as if he were to blame. He had never before seen that side of her. She had always been gay, conscienceless, in the Bollinger-bubble of all the money they had been making. The chill between them turned to freezing point and he wondered how he was going to get away from her. It was just then that he learned that a wise man from the East, from Bellevue Hill actually, had begun selling his holdings. If the richest man in the country was getting out of the market then it was clear, to everyone but the fools, that the boom would not last, as the fools predicted, till Christmas.
Without telling anyone, he had already transferred the bulk of his money to a bank in Liechtenstein. He sold up the rest of his holdings and without saying goodbye to anyone, least of all Billie, he had walked out of the office one Friday afternoon and caught a plane to Bangkok and from there to Paris. He had been good at French at school and he had kept up his study and practice of it because he liked the sound and nuances. Within a month of landing in Paris he had a job with a French bank as an investment adviser. He changed his name and his appearance. He had had the anonymous good looks of male models found in mail-order catalogues, spoiled only by a broken nose. He had worn the nose, broken in a university rugby match, as a badge of honour; it lifted the macho image of wheeling-dealing brokers. The nose was rebuilt, he had his hair cut short in the French style; he was still anonymously good-looking, but any visitor from Sydney would have to look twice at him to recognize him. He spoke French with barely an accent, not easy for an Australian—not the best linguists in the world. He dressed Parisian, even took on French manners. Sydney and everyone there, even his pharmacist father, with whom he never got on, and his sister, snug and smug in a happy North Shore marriage, began to fade from memory. He was as self-contained as he wished to be.
There were affairs, of course. Then one proved difficult and dirty. There was another abortion and the girl, from Brittany, a hard-headed region, threatened to go to the bank and denounce him if he did not marry her. Whether the bank would have listened to her was debatable; but, in a moment of Dom Perignon-induced weakness, beside her in bed, the worst place for secrets, he had told her things about his past that he thought she would never remember. He had forgotten, or didn't know, that many Frenchwomen, inspired by Ninon de Lenclos, wrote diaries. He had resigned from the bank and left for Canada. He felt an utter bastard, but self-recognition does not necessarily mean being conscience-stricken. Guilt is only a comfort blanket for those who want to wear it.
In Toronto he went to work for another bank. It was not the most exciting city, especially after Paris, but he had had enough excitement for the time being. Then disaster, in the form of romance, struck: he fell, really, truly, in love. She was French-Canadian, Catholic, beautiful and she was helplessly in love with him. They were married when she was two months pregnant (the Quebec nuns had not taught her to keep her knees together) and he had settled into the sort of life he had laughed at back home. Upper middle class, country club, even church-going: som
etimes he stepped outside himself and wondered what had happened to him. His hair began to turn grey, he had to watch his weight, he had two daughters and a son. The past slipped off the map of his life.
Then on a business trip to Chicago, sitting in a hotel room just like this one, he had switched on the television and seen an interview, relayed from Kansas City, with Billie (the first time he heard that name) and her husband, the ambassador-elect to Australia.
Just as today in this room he had switched on the television and on the midday news had seen the woman who had caught sight of him as he was about to step out of Billie's room in that flea-bag hotel. There was no mistaking her. They had stared at each other long enough to identify each other.
3
I
DELIA JONES was arraigned next morning and released on bail provided by the Women's Protection League. With the court lists as crowded as they were it could be another two years before she was brought to trial. Justice sees no injustice in taking its time, which is one reason why judges rarely die of heart failure.
“Who was the magistrate?” Malone asked.
Gail Lee had gone down to the court, though she had not been Mrs. Jones' escort. “Mrs. Pulbrook.”
“A dragon. She hates men.”
“So do I. Occasionally.” She left his office and went out to the main room, sat down at her desk and stared at her computer as if willing it to come up with a compendium of men's faults. Malone was glad to see it remain blank.
He had no computer in his own office, looking on it as a watchdog that might turn on him. He sometimes recalled, with nostalgia but no regret at its passing, the old “murder box” that Clements had kept. A battered cardboard shoe-box into which pieces of evidence had been stuffed like family memorabilia: the good old days . . . He went out to Clements, who sat staring at his computer as if it was sending him nothing but ransom notes.
“Bad news comes quicker on this thing,” he said. “Does Bill Gates know?”
“What's the bad news?” said Malone, as if there wasn't enough of it. He sat down, looking relaxed but stiff inside.
“The Pavane job. Our Feds think we should invite them in and some secretary from the embassy says her boss, the DCM—”He looked enquiringly at Malone.
“Deputy Chief of Mission. His name's Kortright.”
“He wants daily reports, whether restricted or otherwise. Hourly, if we can give them. Stuff him and them.” He swivelled in his chair, leaned forward on his desk. “I'm not gunna sit here like some bloody listening-post—”
“Simmer down. You're going to be working with me. This needs at least two senior men on it. Turn your paperwork over to—”
“Not me,” said Gail Lee from her nearby desk.
“Nor me,” said Sheryl Dallen from behind Clements. “You need two senior women with you and we're them.”
Then Phil Truach, smug after two cigarettes down in the parking lot, came in, sat down, put down a shopping bag beside him and said, “Bad news.”
Clements looked at his computer. “Not on this. Not more shit.”
“You'll have it on it eventually. I went down to the Southern Savoy this morning, do some cleaning up, a few things I thought we might of overlooked—”
“And we had?” said Malone. Why were premonitions hovering around him like starving crows?
“I went back into the store room where Mrs. Jones did her husband.” He was addressing Clements, not Malone; almost too obviously. “There were no knives in there, never have been. Not a chef's kitchen knife. Jones evidently was as neat as his wife—his sidekick said Boris had a place for everything and everything in its place. No knives.”
This is going to get worse, thought Malone and remained silent. He was aware that the two girls were leaning forward but not looking at him, ignoring him as if he were not there.
“There was no knife missing from the hotel kitchen—I had the chef count every one. Then I went out to Rozelle, saw Mrs. Jones.”
You had no right to do that, Phil. But of course he did.
“I asked for a look at her kitchen. She asked me did I have a search warrant—just like a professional. Or do they watch too many cop shows these days?”
“Go on,” said Clements, aware of Malone's silence.
“I said no, I didn't have one, but I could get one without any trouble. She let me in and I made for the kitchen. There was a matched set of knives, in one of those wooden holders, on a bench beside the stove. I asked her which one she'd used to knife Boris. She kept her mouth shut, but after a minute she took one out and handed it to me. She hated my guts, but she wasn't gunna do me, too.” He reached down to the shopping bag and took out a plastic bag; in it was a long-bladed kitchen knife. Only then did he look at Malone: “Sorry, Scobie. It looks as if she went in to the hotel to kill Boris. She had the intention all along.”
There was silence for a while, everyone looking at Malone. Even the four other detectives at their computers were still, as if what had come up on their screens was not what they had expected. It was Clements who at last said, “Looks like we'll have to tell the DPP, get them to appeal to have the bail revoked.”
Malone still said nothing because he could think of nothing to say; then Sheryl said, “She's got two kids—what about them?”
“They're the ones I'm thinking of,” said Truach, who had four children of his own. “What if she tops them and then tops herself? She could be depressed enough,” he said, looking again at Malone as if to say, I'm trying to find excuses for her, boss. “It wouldn't be the first time it's happened.”
There was another silence; the room was carpeted with thin ice. Then Sheryl said, “I saw the kids last night, at Surry Hills. That Mrs. Quantock brought 'em in to see her—the duty sergeant let 'em talk to her. They're not three- and four-year-olds, they're kids who understand what's going on. She loves 'em and they love her—you should of seen them. She would never harm them. Not even by topping herself.”
“She's already harmed them,” said Malone at last, feeling he had to say something, remembering the effect on Jason Rockne and his younger sister when their mother had been indicted for murder.
“Well, yes,” said Sheryl, glad to be able to talk to him direct. “But she wouldn't murder them.”
“How well did you know her?” asked Gail.
There was no rank in this talk and Malone, though selfishly tempted, did not pull any. He wanted help here, not antagonism. “Pretty well. But that was twenty-five years ago.” And a man never really knew a woman. Adam hadn't known Eve and it had been that way ever since. “You're right. I don't think she would harm the kids any more than she has.”
“So what do we do?” asked Clements; then answered himself: “We'll let things stand as they are.”
Truach was the only one not convinced, though he was not going to argue. But, holding up the knife in the plastic bag: “What do we do with this?”
“We can't withhold evidence,” said Malone, but lamely.
“Why not?” said Sheryl. “We'll produce it when she goes to trial. Give her counsel time to rebut it, if they can.”
“I think we should at least talk to the DPP,” said Truach.
“Leave it with me,” said Clements and put the plastic bag with the knife in the bottom drawer of his desk, where Malone knew it would stay till Clements decided it was time to produce it.
“Okay,” said Truach; did he look relieved? Malone wondered. “But we'd better keep an eye on her. Get the locals to look in on her occasionally. Not just wait for her weekly check-in with them.”
“She has to report to them once a week,” said Gail.
“I know,” said Truach. “But if they call in on her, maybe once or twice a month, have a cuppa with her, no heavy stuff, they can keep an eye on the kids. How did they feel about their father?”
“I talked with Mrs. Quantock last night. She holds nothing back—about him, anyway. The kids were dead scared of him, Phil. He was a monster. A real fucking monster—” For
a moment she lost her customary calm; even Sheryl looked at her in surprise. “Let's leave her alone!”
Clements looked at Malone, who said nothing; then he stood up. “Okay, meeting's over. Sheryl, you go out to Balmain, they cover Rozelle, and ask them to keep an eye on her, go to the house maybe once or twice a month. Just a drop-in call.”
“Do we tell 'em what we know about the knife?”
Clements didn't look at Malone this time. “No, that's our business.”
Truach got to his feet. “I need a smoke. I'll be downstairs.”
He went out of the room, the odd man out. But as he passed Malone he pressed the latter's shoulder, an intimate gesture that was out of character for him. Nobody said anything and Malone got up and went back into his own office. Clements followed him, said, “You're off this case. No more Delia Jones, okay?”
“Am I being soft on her?”
“Don't ask me, mate. I have a dozen girls I could be soft on if they came back into my life. With Delia, let Sheryl and Gail do the deciding. They trust her not to do any more damage.”
“I'm still not sure—” Then he threw up his hands. “Righto, I'm off it till she comes to trial. I'm sorry we made things so awkward for Phil—”
“Forget it. This isn't the first time evidence has been withheld till we wanted to produce it. In the meantime—”
“Yeah, in the meantime. Where have we got on the Ambassador's wife?”
“Romy phoned through a preliminary on her p-m report. The stomach contents show Mrs. Pavane had a very good dinner—Japanese cuisine—some hours before she was done in. Where? Who with?”
“The girls can look into that, too.” Then his phone rang and he picked it up. “Malone.”
“Joe Himes, Scobie.”
Malone waved Clements to a chair. “What've you got, Joe? If anything?”
“I stayed last night at the Southern Savoy—incognito, I think is the word they use. I wanted a look at the place, thought I might pick up something by osmosis.” Malone made no comment and Himes said, “You don't appreciate?”
