Yesterday's Shadow

by Jon Cleary

  “Yeah. They're gunna fire me, they said—”

  “Who said that? We'll see what we can do. Jobs are hard to find. Take care and stay away from randy men. Married ones.”

  He and Gail Lee went out of the office, stopped inside the reception desk. There was only one clerk on duty, a young dark-haired man who was obviously Asian. Malone, like most of his generation and certainly that of his parents, had the astigmatic eye when it came to separating Asians. This one's name was Jose, said the badge on his tunic.

  “Where do you come from, Jose?”

  “Manila, sir.”

  “Righto, stick with Dolores, don't report this to the hotel management—”

  “I already have, sir. Here comes Mr. Niven now.”

  He had come in the front door. He was wearing a tweed overcoat, buttoned up to the neck against the wind, and a tweed hat. Very English, thought Malone, but a bit actorish. The good-looking face had been polished by the wind, the cheeks shining.

  “More trouble? Oh God, is this place developing a jinx?”

  “Let's go into your office, Deric. I think we can sort things out—” He looked over his shoulder at the reception clerk. “Tell Dolores she can go—”

  “She hasn't finished her shift yet—”

  “Let her finish it,” said Deric Niven. “I'll talk to her later. In my office, Inspector?”

  “Just where I was going to suggest. We have Mrs. Jones, Boris' wife, in there.”

  “Oh God.”

  Malone waited for him to put the back of his hand to his brow. Come on, Malone. Why is it that when one is tired, prejudices float up above goodwill? “We're trying to smooth all this out with no fuss, if we can. Don't lose hope, Deric. We'll keep this one out of the media.” But he avoided Gail's eye as he said it.

  They went into Niven's office and Delia, still on her chair, sat up at once. She said nothing, just looked curiously at Niven, then at Malone and Gail.

  “You haven't met Mrs. Jones, have you? This is Mr. Niven, the manager of the hotel.”

  “Mrs. Jones—” Niven nodded politely, but that was all. She was an unwelcome guest in his hotel.

  She just nodded back at him, meeting his frostiness with her own. Then she turned to Malone. “Can I go now?”

  “I'll get Constable Szabo to have a patrol car take you home. Is there anyone there? Your friend, Mrs.—?”

  “Quantock,” said Gail.

  “No, there's no one there. I'm on my own.” She made it sound like utter desolation.

  “Where are your kids?”

  “With my mother.” She looked at Niven again, then back at Malone.

  “Where does she live?”

  “Bexley, she still lives there.” She was annoyed. “Don't you remember, Scobie? You used to take me home in your old Holden—”

  He sidestepped that, aware of Niven's lifting his head. “I think you'd better go there. Detective Lee will call your mother, tell her to expect you—”

  “It's late. You take me home to my own place—”

  He ignored that. “I don't think you should go home to an empty house—not after tonight—”

  But all at once she was paying no attention to him. She was staring directly at Niven. “That's him!” Her voice was gritty. “He was the man tried to take the taxi from me that night, outside the hotel—”

  II

  As Malone, in his youth, had ventured into the territory known as Woman, he had slowly worked out what sort of woman he would want to live with. In a casual father-to-son conversation he had once told Tom to look for a woman with some mystery to her—“Don't choose the what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort.”

  Tom, at that stage, had been happy to welcome any woman who fell into his lap. But he had said, “Was Mum like that? Some mystery to her?”

  “Yes.”

  And now on this cold winter's night he was asking himself had there been any mystery in Delia Bates when he had known her. She certainly was proving now that what you saw was not what you got.

  She had been taken out to her mother's home in Bexley (Don't you remember, Scobie? she had said, driving the memory needle into him, trying to infect him) and Deric Niven had been brought here to Police Centre in Surry Hills. Malone, before taking him into an interview room, had taken him through the Incident Room. He had paused to speak to one of the detectives on duty, working a ploy that had worked before. Niven had stood beside Gail Lee; he had been manoeuvred to face the flow-chart. There two bodies were displayed in graphic photos such as one never saw in newspapers or on television. He stared at the photos, then abruptly turned away, putting his hand to his mouth.

  “You want to be sick?” asked Gail.

  He shook his head, was relieved when Malone led him on to one of the interview rooms. He was still in his overcoat, looking as if trying to shrink into it. He slumped down on a chair as Malone and Gail sat down opposite him on the other side of a table.

  “You feeling okay, Deric?”

  He nodded, sought his voice and found it. “I had nothing to do with Mrs. Pavane's death.”

  “I can't remember us saying that you did,” said Malone. “But you haven't told us all you know about that night.”

  There was shouting and swearing outside. The Surry Hills station was part of the Police Centre and the Saturday night cattle round-up was at its peak. Out there were drunks, brawlers, hookers trying to roll clients: all simple law-breakers. None connected with a murder.

  “Am I going to be charged with anything?”

  “That will depend. Why? Do you want your lawyer?”

  He looked at the video recorder, then back at them. “Not yet. If I talk to you, can we leave that off?”

  “That will depend on what you tell us. But for the time being, okay, we won't turn it on. Now, on Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning, were you up in Room 342, Mrs. Pavane's room?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you tell us you were off duty Tuesday night, that you were not at the hotel?”

  Niven said nothing. As if he were suddenly feeling stifled, he stood up, pulled off his overcoat and dropped it on the table. Then he sat down again.

  “Did you have any connection with Mrs. Pavane?”

  “Oh, for Crissake!” He twisted his head, like a bad actor; then he looked back at them, leaned forward, another theatrical piece: “I'm her brother!”

  Both Malone and Gail Lee sat back in their chairs: even a little theatrically, though neither of them noticed. Then Malone said, “Go on. Give us some family history, Deric.”

  Niven folded his hands together, sat back and looked at them as if they were some sort of memory bowl. He might have been a good actor once, Malone thought; he knew how to use pauses. Or maybe he was looking for memories that had long since faded.

  “I hadn't seen her in almost twenty years. We grew up on a farm outside Albany—” A town on the far south-west coast of the continent, as remote from Sydney as one could get; as remote as the stars from Corvallis, Oregon, and Kansas City, Missouri. “Our name is, always has been, Niven. But she changed hers—”

  “Several times,” said Gail Lee.

  He nodded. “That was her. Always wanting to be someone else. She hated the farm, living on it . . . We raised wheat, at harvest time she'd always disappear—”

  “What about you?” said Gail. “Being gay? You are, aren't you?”

  He nodded again. “My dad, if he was with his mates, he'd walk away when I put in an appearance. I worked as hard as him on the farm, but it didn't make any difference. Then he and my mother were killed—the farm ute ran off the road and hit a tree—”

  Malone glanced at Gail, who nodded. Billie Pavane had kept one true fact in her resumé.

  “I was seventeen and Trish—”

  “That was her given name?” asked Malone.

  “Patricia, but she was always called Trish. She was nineteen. Right after the funeral she told me the farm was mine and she left, went to—came here to Sydney. She dropped me a card o
ccasionally, but then they stopped and I never heard from her.”

  He stopped, too, and they let him swim in whatever he felt: regret, resentment, whatever. Then Malone said, “Were you close? Were there other brothers and sisters?”

  “No, there were just the two of us. We were never that close, but we never fought. We never confided in each other . . . She liked men. My mother was always at her, people were talking about her when she was only fifteen, sixteen—”

  “She had lots of boyfriends?”

  “Only the ones with money—or who were going to inherit money. There was money in the bush back then. She was never interested in the road-mender's son.”

  Malone said gently, “You didn't like her, Deric?”

  “Oh no! No.” He unclasped his hands, spread them, then folded them together again. “I got into a couple of fights over her—guys who made snide remarks about her. Gays can fight, you know,” he said and looked challengingly at Malone.

  “I don't doubt it, Deric. Go on.”

  “Well—” He paused, looked puzzled, as if this was the first time someone had asked him to recap his life. “Well, when I turned twenty-one I sold the farm and went to London. I had enough money to stake myself, to try and be an actor. I never made it. A few jobs in repertory, places like Swindon—God!” He made Swindon sound as if it were down a coal mine. “Some work in TV—I was in a scene like this once in The Bill.” He waved an arm around him. “A small part. I did some BBC radio work. But I was never going to make a living at it. I stuck at it too long, but eventually I came to my senses.”

  “And you heard nothing from Trish all this time?”

  “Not a word. I heard, I dunno where, that she'd gone to America, but I didn't know where. I took the hotel management course, spent the last of the money I'd got for the farm, worked on the Continent in small hotels—my French and Italian aren't bad. I had a French partner in London . . .” He stopped, as if that was a chapter in his life he hadn't opened in a long time. He went on: “Then I came home, worked in Perth, then Adelaide, then I finished up here in Sydney.” He drew in a deep breath and shut his eyes, like a tired reader closing a book that had disturbed him.

  Malone and Gail, both patient people, let him stay in that darkness that he had closed in on himself. He would come out of it, they knew, he was glad to have someone to tell his secrets to.

  He opened his eyes. “It's a bit late, but I loved Trish. She could be a pain in the arse—” Suddenly he smiled, looked at Malone, who smiled in return. “Wrong phrase. She could be a pain—but she always stuck up for me. Against Mum or Dad or anyone who picked on me. It's no fun being gay in the bush.”

  “So when did you finally make contact with her?” asked Malone.

  “I wrote to her when she first came back to Australia, to Canberra. I saw a photo of her when she and her husband arrived—even though it was nearly twenty years, I recognized her.”

  “Would someone else have recognized her?”

  “You mean someone here in Sydney? Someone who knew her—what? Ten, fifteen years ago? I don't know. Maybe. But I knew her at once, soon as I saw the photo. I wrote her—I didn't know whether she would reply. But she did—though she asked me not to say anything to anyone till she had seen me.”

  “And you didn't tell any of your friends your sister was the wife of the American Ambassador?” said Gail.

  “No, I didn't. Is that so strange?”

  “Frankly, yes. People gossip, even when they don't mean to.”

  “Well, you're wrong.” He was annoyed. “This was my sister asking a favour of me—the first time in twenty years.”

  “I apologize,” said Gail and sounded sincere.

  He nodded, like a teacher saying, Let that be a lesson to you. Then he went on, “She came up to Sydney and I met her and we had drinks. It was a bit—well, stiff, at first. Then it was like it was back home. We even talked about the farm, though neither of us was nostalgic for it. Then she told me she'd said goodbye to Trish Niven—she was very frank, like she used to be years ago. She said she'd created a new life and she didn't want it spoiled.”

  “She was asking you to keep your mouth shut?” said Malone.

  “Yes. Yes, if you want to put it like that. She said we'd keep in touch, but she didn't want it to be known that we were brother and sister.”

  “So she was never going to tell her husband about you?”

  “I guess not. I was going to ask her about it, but never got round to it.”

  “So you agreed to what she suggested?”

  “I agreed. Why not? I'm not a vindictive person, Mr. Malone. Maybe I didn't admire what she'd done—”

  “Did she tell you what she'd done?” asked Gail.

  “No-o. But I guessed there was something there that she didn't want to talk about, something that had happened in Sydney before she went to the States. I didn't ask her about it. I said I'd play it any way she wanted.”

  “Which meant you weren't going to be introduced into her circle? The diplomatic circle?” He sat back, more relaxed now. “Why are you so pissed off about her, Mr. Malone?” Malone didn't answer that, just said, “Go on. How did she finish up here in the Southern Savoy?”

  “We're trying to be better than we are, Mr. Malone. Don't put us down.”

  “I'm not putting you down, Deric. When I go anywhere, this is the sort of hotel I stay in. I'm not five-star material. Why did she come here, book a room?”

  Niven took his time again; he was sizing them up as much as they had been measuring him. “She rang me Monday, asked could I book her in for one night.”

  “Did you ask her why? Why here and not the Regent or the Intercontinental?”

  “She said she had some business to attend to. She said she would explain later, but she wasn't going to do it over the phone.”

  “Was she phoning from the embassy?”

  “I don't think so. There was a lot of noise in the background, like a restaurant, I thought.”

  “So you booked the room? In what name?”

  “She told me it had to be Mrs. Belinda Paterson.”

  “Deric, you did a lot of lying last Wednesday morning when we were called in. You played dumb to everything we asked you.”

  “Well—” There were no theatrical gestures now. “Well, I was in shock. Really. But . . .” He looked at both of them, leaned forward again. “With all that media mob out there in the lobby—the American Ambassador's wife—Christ, what would you have done? You'd have kept your mouths shut till you'd sorted things out in your mind—”

  “That was four days ago,” said Malone. “You wouldn't have opened your mouth at all if Mrs. Jones hadn't pointed the finger at you.”

  “You don't know that I wouldn't have—” For a moment belligerence welled up in him, like bile; then it subsided. “Mrs. Jones, anyway, was mistaken—”

  “We'll get around to that. But first—did you see her when she arrived at the hotel? Your sister?”

  “No, I was off duty and I thought it better to stay away. Okay,” he said as they both looked sceptical, “I didn't want to know. I was going to see her Wednesday morning.”

  “And ask her then why all the secrecy?”

  “Maybe. I don't know. There was twenty years I wanted to ask her about—” He looked suddenly saddened, regretting all the lost years. Whatever sort of woman Trish was, thought Malone, he loved her.

  “Did you see who her visitor was? Did anyone?”

  Niven hesitated: “Ye-es. The housemaid, Dolores. I told her to keep her mouth shut, too.”

  Malone sucked in air through his teeth. Gail Lee leaned forward as if she might hit Niven; he leaned back. There was silence in the room; outside in the square there was the wail of a siren, the sound of disaster. Then Malone squashed down his temper.

  “Jesus, Deric—” He waited a moment till he was fully in control of himself. “I oughta pinch you now . . . What the bloody hell prompted you to tell her that?”

  “I don't know. I—I
guess I was trying to protect Trish.”

  Malone sighed. “I hope you keep the hotel's books in better order than you do your thoughts. We might've been four days better ahead if you had—Ah!” He waved a hand in disgust, looked at Gail. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “We'll talk to Dolores,” she said. “But first—Mr. Niven?”

  He appeared to be not paying attention; then he looked up: “What?”

  “Why were you here in the hotel at the time of the murder? You were supposed to be off duty.”

  He was gathering his thoughts, fumble-fingered as he had claimed to be on the night of the murder. His arm jerked and he knocked his hat to the floor; he bent and picked it up, then carefully placed it on his overcoat. He's acting, thought Malone and wanted to yell at him.

  “That—that's what I told you. I was off duty. Mrs. Jones is mistaken. I wasn't here in the hotel. I'd been to a club down in Bay Street, around the corner from here. You can check, they know me there, it's a gay club. I came up here to the hotel because I knew cabs were always pulling up outside there—”

  “Mrs. Jones says you were in a hurry, you tried to muscle in on her for the cab—”

  “She's mistaken. Come on, look at her! She's just murdered her husband—you talk about my state of mind—” Then he took control of his agitation: “Yes, I tried to beat her to the cab. But that's the way it is—when did you last step back to let someone else take a cab? It's a free-for-all.”

  “I rarely take cabs,” said Malone.

  “You take hire cars? On a cop's salary?”

  “No,” said Gail. “Our boss is a notorious tightwad. Taxi drivers would starve if they depended on him.”

  “Thank you for the reference,” said Malone.

  But the small exchange had softened Niven; he laughed, sat back in his chair. Malone took advantage of the moment: “Righto, you weren't at the hotel that night. We'll check with the club. When did you talk to Dolores?”

  “When she came on duty Wednesday night. I knew she had been working on that floor—I didn't know she had been having it off with Boris. If I'd known that was going on, they'd both been out on their ear . . . I just asked her if she'd seen anything, not expecting her to say anything. But yes, she said, she'd seen the lady in 342 go in there with a man. A guy with grey hair was how she described him, nothing more than that.”