by Jon Cleary
“Joe, Osmosis was the Greek feller failed the police entrance exam. We just use suspicion and interrogation.” He rolled his eyes at Clements. Bloody Yanks. “What did you pick up?”
“Okay, no osmosis.” Himes still sounded good-humoured. “It's not the sorta hotel takes any notice of its guests unless they ask. But I guess that's the way it is nowadays, hotels. You pays your money and they don't give a fuck what you do, so long's you don't burn the place down. If Mrs. Pavane made any noise while she was being strangled, no one heard it. Or wanted to hear it.”
Malone sighed in agreement. “That's the way it is, Joe. Nobody wants to be involved. You got anything else?” He tried to sound patient. He liked Himes, but he didn't like interference. “The consulate got anything to add?”
“I talked to the consulate driver—he went out to meet Mrs. Pavane. She was supposed to come out of the terminal to where he was waiting for her—local rules say he can't go into the terminal and leave his car unattended. She didn't show. He waited ten minutes, then got a baggage handler to keep an eye on the car while he went in to look for her. A ground hostess said she'd seen a woman like the one the driver described come off the plane, but she hadn't taken much notice of her—”
“Wait a minute. An ambassador's wife—the American Ambassador's wife—flies up from Canberra and nobody takes any notice of her?”
“Scobie, I queried that.” Himes seemed to lose his good humour for the moment. “She'd have got special attention on the plane, but at this end—Scobie, there were two Cabinet Ministers on that plane. Who gets the attention—Cabinet Ministers or an ambassador's wife? There were six or eight guys waiting for the Ministers—”
“Righto, Joe, I get the point. So Mrs. Pavane just slipped out of sight?”
“The ground hostess thought—thought—she saw the woman, she didn't know who she was, go off with a man, but she couldn't be sure.”
“Did anyone do any checking yesterday morning when she went missing?”
“They contacted your Feds at lunchtime, but then it was called off when Mrs. Pavane phoned her husband—or rather, she got his secretary. All she said was that she would be catching a later plane back than she'd booked.”
Malone switched continents: “What have you heard from your FBI mates?”
“They expect to tell me something tomorrow. They're already down in Corvallis.” Himes was starting to sound not aggressive but certainly more definite, as if to say the FBI, we Americans, were not dragging their feet. “If there's anything more to find out about Mrs. Pavane, they'll find it.”
“I'm sure they will, Joe—”
“What have you come up with?” Definitely an edge to his voice now.
“We're tracing the feller who tried to speak to Mrs. Pavane at the restaurant a couple of weeks ago. And we know she had a Japanese meal the night before last, some time before she was murdered. We're doing a trace through them, the better ones.”
“Okay, I'll be back to you soon's I hear from our Portland office.” He hung up, the line cold in Malone's ear.
Malone put down the phone. “I've trodden on his toes . . . Put someone on that Japanese restaurant trace. What are you grinning at?”
“You said she'd had a Jap meal before her murder. We'd have had a mess if she'd had it after the murder.”
“Don't be such a bloody smartarse. Or are you trying to lighten my mood or something?”
“It needs it.” Clements stood up. “You're getting shit on the liver again—”
“Hang on. Sorry. Sit down. Now what have we got on who had lunch at Catalina that day the stranger thought he recognized Mrs. Pavane?”
Clements sat down again. “Andy Graham is on it.”
Graham was Homicide's bloodhound; he would follow a trail to the moon. He was big and awkward and always in a hurry, but he produced. Some men, like seamstresses in invisible mending workrooms, can weave loose threads together till a pattern is regained or established. Andy Graham, for all his blundering rush through life, had patience. And the seamstresses, searching for a loose thread, would have agreed that patience was necessary. They would not, however, have tolerated any canine comparison. No woman would want to be referred to as a bloodhound bitch.
Then Malone's phone rang again: “Scobie? It's Romy. I've just finished the p-m on Boris Jones—you'll have the full report this afternoon. But there is something interesting—”
Malone waited.
“—Mr. Jones had sex with someone, I'd say not long before he was murdered. He hadn't washed his penis, there was dried semen on it.”
Malone took his time: “You're suggesting Mr. Jones might've had sex with Mrs. Pavane and then strangled her?”
“I'm not suggesting anything. I'll let you know when we get a DNA report on her from Biology at Lidcombe. You're still coming to dinner tonight?”
“We'll be there.” If only to keep life on an even keel. He hung up. “That was your wife.”
“I gathered. Good news or bad news?”
“I dunno. Mr. Jones had dipped his wick not long before Mrs. Jones did him in.”
Clements thought about that for a long moment; then he said, “It's against the odds. Why would an ambassador's wife take on some rough trade with a guy she couldn't have known? A cleaner.”
“Again, I dunno. Why would a film star pick up a street hooker, instead of a call girl, to go down on him? That happened. I've been in this game long enough never to make guesses about why people do things. You're the same.”
“Okay, the first thing we do is find out if he had it off with his wife before she stuck the knife in him. I'll send Gail and Sheryl out, that'll be better than you and me leaning on her.”
“Infinitely.”
“It's long odds, but if he did get into bed with Mrs. Pavane and then killed her, you'd better get off both cases right now.”
“I couldn't think of a better idea.”
II
Ambassador Stephen Pavane had hardly slept for two nights. Love is debilitating, the cynics said; but they were the ones, almost invariably men, who had been unsuccessful in love. He was no cynic and he had been successful in love several times, but he agreed: love could be debilitating. He had loved Billie with a passion that continually surprised him. He had loved his first wife, but her slow death from cancer had been a preparation for grief and loss. It had brought a void in his life, but it had not been as deep as he had expected; it had been like the filling-in of a grave from the bottom. When the headstone had been placed above her it had somehow been a release. Not a joyous one, but a relief nonetheless. There had been empty years afterwards and then Billie had come along. It had not been love at first sight, not for him, though she had said it had been for her. She had been good at flattery because in most instances she had meant it. Then, abruptly and deeply, he had fallen in love with her. And now . . .
“What?” He was in his office with Kortright, his Deputy Chief of Mission.
“Stephen—” Pavane had insisted that at their level there was no need for formality when they were alone. “You're not listening to me. Why don't you go back to the private quarters?”
“Walter, if I go back there, what do I do? Sit and stare out the window?” He sat up straight, did look out the window for a moment. It was a cold Canberra day, the trees bare, a white haze that looked like a dusting of snow on the surrounding hills. One of the Marine guards crossed the lawn, bent over against the wind in a most un-Marine-like hunch. Last night's weather report had said there had been heavy falls at Perisher and Thredbo up in the mountains and he and Billie had been planning a weekend of skiing. He looked back at Kortright. “What were you saying?”
Kortright had a bad habit of making his patience look obvious. He still had some way to go to achieve the bland hypocrisy of a true diplomat; he was aiming for the British or French models, but he had some years of learning ahead. “Roger Bodine thinks he should go up to Sydney.”
“Joe Himes is there. The Sydney police don't want us i
nterfering.”
“Roger is aware of that. But he thinks this may be more than—than just an ordinary case of murder.” He had been fortunate so far in his postings, at embassies where Americans had not been in danger.
Pavane gave him a hard eye. “It's not an ordinary case, Walter. It's my wife, the wife of an ambassador. You're a professional diplomat, but sometimes—” He gave up, realizing his grief was turning into random anger. “Go on.”
Kortright had remained bland at the insult; he was enough of a diplomat to have progressed that far. “There are religious fanatics threatening to kill Americans wherever they are—”
She slept with whoever killed her: but he couldn't tell Kortright that. Eventually it would come out, but he still hoped it would not be necessary. The hollowness in him deepened.
Still he managed to say: “There are no religious fanatics in this country, Walter—their religion is sport, but they don't shoot the players the way South Americans do. Walter, she checked into that hotel alone—don't ask me why, I can't explain it. She booked the room. There's a much simpler explanation than some religious fanatic luring her there to kill her. But don't ask me what it is.”
“So we keep Roger out of the scene?”
“For the time being, yes.” He had no trouble sounding firm. He was protecting Billie. Or himself?
“Well . . .” Kortright closed the folder he had brought in, though he had taken nothing from it. But it struck Pavane now that his DCM always carried a folder, almost like a talisman. He was still a bureaucrat at heart, though they can be liars like diplomats. “There are hundreds of messages of sympathy. I'll see that a general acknowledgement is prepared.”
Pavane had come to like Canberra in the two months he had been here, despite its isolation from the mainstream of Australian life. It was isolated. But then so were Islamabad and Brasilia and they were much more important postings. It was Billie who had described Canberra as a multi-racial country club, with everyone paying their dues and with the two senior members the Americans and the British. But waves, he knew, would already be in the making; as in any country club. There would have been ripples last night at the reception at the French Embassy. There would be a rising swell this evening at the Israeli Embassy. And, a long way away, at those other country clubs, Mission Hills and Kansas City.
“Roger has asked for diplomatic security and got it,” said Kortright, as if reading his thoughts. “There'll be no announcements from the Sydney police without talking to us first.”
“Good. The Aussies can be cooperative—”
“Sometimes.”
Kortright's mouth did not make a moue of contempt, but the dark military moustache seemed to bend in a curve downwards. He had said nothing to Pavane and he did his job extremely well, but the Ambassador, before leaving Washington, had learned as much as he could about the people he would be working with. Kortright was marking time, waiting for the posting to an important capital. London or Paris or Rome, somewhere where sophistication was not suspect and an object like Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles would not be treasured as much as the Elgin Marbles or the Mona Lisa. He was not a snob, just that he had been to Harvard. Pavane, if he stayed, would not be sorry to lose him. If he stayed: it was the first time the thought had entered his head.
“My wife's body will be released tomorrow. I'd like to be on a plane tomorrow night with it.”
“We've made several bookings with United—”
“No, charter a private plane—I'll pay for it. I don't want to be sitting amongst a lot of passengers with my wife's body in the hold.”
“No, of course not.” Kortright was not all State Department; he could be genuinely sympathetic. “How long will you stay?”
“I don't know, Walter. After the funeral, I'll go on to Washington, talk to the President. A week, ten days at the most. I'll be back—” He ended in mid-air. He could not talk about the future till he found out what had happened in the past. Billie's past . . .
When Kortright had gone, Pavane got up and walked to the window. The embassy was on a small hill, a Southern Georgian construction that had both amused and pleased him when he first saw it. One looked for Spanish moss hanging from the local eucalypts and darky retainers humming spirituals to arriving embassy guests. But he had recognized at once that it was a statement; other embassies declared their origins. Even the Chinese had looked to their past, with dragons and pagoda-like rooflines in the design of their embassy.
He had looked forward to this post, though he had known it would be no bed of roses, at least not all the way. There were matters of defence to be discussed and investment, too; the Australians were running hard to jump aboard the carousel of globalism. But trade was the bogey that kept cropping up all the time, especially in terms of wheat, meat and cotton, which were his business interests. The Australians were like old-time pirates in their trumpeting of free trade. They chose to ignore the local pressures on Congressmen back home, seemingly unaware that the farm lobby didn't care a damn whether a Congressman was a Democrat or a Republican, so long as he did what he was told or he'd be out at the next election.
Still, in his short time here he had come to enjoy working with the Australians. They were civilized, to a certain extent, and no more devious than the politicians back home in Missouri and Kansas. There was a bluntness to them that he admired and that reminded him of stories his own father had told him of Harry Truman and, before him, Jim Pendergast. They understood the true nature of politics and he was reminded again of another man back home, the Irish sage from Kansas City, Jerry Jette, who had said, “Political science is to politics what botany is to neurosurgery.” The natives here in Canberra understood that and he had felt at home with them.
And now, for the moment anyway, it all meant nothing.
III
“Where's Inspector Malone?” said Delia Jones.
“He couldn't come,” said Gail Lee. “He's caught up in the murder of the American Ambassador's wife.”
“And she's more important than me?”
“No, she's not, Delia. But there are pressures—he's got everyone and his brother on his back.”
“You dunno what it's like,” said Sheryl Dallen.
Delia stared at them; then appeared to be mollified. “Okay, but why's he sent you? Are you going to be harassing me all the time I'm on bail? One of your guys was out here this morning without a warrant—”
“That's why we're here, Delia.”
The two women detectives had come to this semidetached cottage in a back street of Rozelle. The small suburb, like so many inner sections of colonial Sydney, had been part of a land grant; the welfare state was invented for the upper classes long before it filtered down to the poor. Rozelle was originally called West Balmain after its lucky grantee, William Balmain, the colony's Principal Surgeon. To get a land grant was a better return than anything provided by Medicare to latterday medicos. The land was sub-divided and sub-divided again; terraces of workers' cottages sprang up like hedgerows. In the 1870s the area got its most imposing institution, the Callan Park asylum for the insane; the locals, though out of their own wits on poor wages, were not impressed. The old asylum is now a writers' centre, not much of an improvement in the opinion of the drinkers at the local pubs.
Gentrification was round the corner in some of the other streets, but here the lowly-paid and the pensioner widows and widowers with thirty or forty years' residence still held their ground. This house had been built in the days when sunshine was kept out for fear it would fade the curtains; the windows were narrow, like defence slots in a castle that had shrunk. There was a small neat garden at the front of the house and Sheryl had wondered to Gail who had tended it, Boris the cleaner or Delia the neat one.
They were in the small kitchen; it was neat and clean. The saucepans that hung above the stove, Gail had noted, were not expensive ones; the magazine on the table was New Idea, not House & Garden. There was no lingering smell of cooking, though this kitchen, she guessed
, had been in use for over a hundred years. Everything was worn, but everything was spotless. Delia might be a battered wife, but she was not a slatternly one.
“We're not here to harass you,” said Sheryl. “Just to ask a question or two. Did your husband play around? You know, with other women?”
Delia didn't frown or look surprised or annoyed; she could have been asked if her husband played bowls. “Yes.”
“You knew?”
“It took me a long while to find out. But yes, I found out about two years ago.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“No.” She was composed again; Gail had to admire her. “He'd have a woman for a week or two, then dump her.”
“Boris sounds a real shit. Why—?” Then Sheryl waved a hand at herself, as if trying to sweep away her disgust. “Sorry, Delia. I shouldn't have said that.”
“Why did I marry him? Sometimes I wonder, myself. He was, I dunno, comforting, I guess you'd call it. When I first met him. I needed that, I'd just broken up with Hugh, my first husband—” Then she leaned forward, not eagerly but as if wanting to make sure: “You're both sympathetic to me, aren't you?”
“Well—” Sheryl leaned back; police sympathy was not something to be handed out like a leaflet. “Delia, you killed your husband. You had that intention all along—”
“No, I didn't!” For a moment the composure was gone.
“Delia—”
“You don't understand. You should of brought Scobie—he'd of understood—” Then she collected herself, gathering the pebbles that had burst out of her like shot. “No, I shouldn't of said that. Forget I said it—I don't wanna get him in trouble. I didn't intend killing Boris—”
Gail had noticed the calendar on the wall above the small fridge. Dates were circled in red, several days apart. “What are those dates?”
Delia turned her head, stared at the calendar as if she had not looked at it before, then turned back. “I was keeping count.”
“Keeping count?”
“When he bashed me. It used to be once a month, six weeks. But lately—”
